Demonization of Women

Philo said that when Adam and Eve first came together, their acts of desire "also gave rise to bodily pleasure, which is the starting point of wicked deeds and violations of the Law, on its account they exchange the life of immortality and well-being for the life of mortality and misfortune."  He also comments that Eve's punishment was a necessity.  The blame is shared equally by Adam and Eve according to Philo.  But he also states that sex is the cause of wickedness.

According to the Testament of Rueben 5:1-6:3, women are evil and are out to get men.  They seek to entice men with their looks, and those they cannot entice with appearance do so by stratagem.  It also notes that women are more susceptible to do evil them men, like Eve was susceptible to the snake's temptation.  It seems almost a paramoid view of women and sounds just like Adam making excuses, saying it isn't his fault but hers.  So many times in history and literature we see men blaming the women.  They say that women sexually tempted them by looking too pretty or by deliberately doing things that are sexually enticing.  The best example of this in my opinion is Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  That is what I thought of when I read this passage.  This author interrupted Genesis 2 and 3 like this: women have weaker wills and can easily be tempted and they can use their scheming powers of seduction to cause men to 'sin' like Eve did to Adam.  Ergo, women should be modest and not tempt men.

According to Tertullian, every woman is an Eve, easily tempted and bearers of the blame of everything from distorting God's image of man to forcing Christ to die on the cross.  He believes that women should continue to be blamed and punished for Eve's act.  She should abstain from looking pretty.  His interpretation of Genesis 2-3: women are to blame for all evil and should be punished and kept from doing so again by not being given a chance to tempt men to do wrong again.  And they must therefore dress and act modestly.

(I would just like to point out how blatantly inaccurate this is.  Excuse this paragraph please, because I will probably sound like a feminist.  But, I work with an organization that reaches out to help prostitutes in Baltimore and for the longest time I believed that a prostitute was a woman who either wanted to be there or needed the money, were thin and dressed skimpily to get customers.  But I have learned that most of these women are girls or even middle aged women who come in all shapes and sizes, are forced to do this and most don't dress skimpily.  Nevertheless, they get customers.  Although I do think women should dress in order to be sexually alluring, I have come to the conclusion that how women dress has less to do with tempting men than I previously thought.  It's not all the women's fault.  If a man wants to have sex, a woman does not have to be dressed immodestly to allure him.  I think women should not dress immodestly because inn my opinion, men can be tempted sexually by women, but not necessarily.  Women can seduce and scheme but we are not always doing that.  Even women who dress modestly and mind their own business get raped, is that her fault?)

The Malleus Maleficarum took all of this to a whole new level.  Basing its teaching on the lessons learned from the Garden of Eden story, the book declares that women more easily give into the temptations of the devil, to whom they go to for sexual pleasure.  The book also declares that women plot with the devil to overthrow men and remove them from their positions as leaders of the human race.  They also seek to despoil men's sexuality by casting spells on men to sexually arouse them and cause them to be tempted to sin and experience lust.  They also cast spells to make them fail to perform sexually.  The Malleus Maleficarum sees women as more than cause of mankind's fallen state but as active workers of evil and the very root of evil itself.  Philo himself claims that sexuality lead to wickedness and The Malleus Maleficarum projects that wickedness on women, whom the author(s) believe(s) prompt it.